Musings and Sometimes Rants about the non-equal status of Fathers in Family Law and Parenting. Additionally periodic comparisons to the treatment of men compared to women in other areas including health care.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

That's exactly what F4J Canada members in Vancouver BC intended when participating for the fourth year in the Vancouver Pride Parade August 02/09. Proud To Be Parents.

After enjoying a well earned feast at the Bat cave after getting our float entry together on Saturday August 01/09 (Thanks to all who attended and contributed), F4J Canada team members were ready to roll for 10:00 am the following morning. Team members not finding their own way to the parade were promptly picked up Sunday morning in New Westminster BC by the F4J Limo and delivered to the parade staging area in Vancouver in a timely manner (Thanks Mr. T).

At the staging area of the parade we were to be soon greeted by Mr. Don Williams with float in tow. For the next hour and half we attended to last minute touches to the float,had time for fellowship and time to check out some of the other parade entries. This year we had 18 people participating with us upon a 30 foot trailer, 1000 watt sound system, awesome tunes, plenty of food, water and cheer to go around. Superheroes included in this years Fathers 4 Justice Canada's entry included BC Hulk (Kevin Christiaens), Metropolis Superman (Murray Williams), Wonder Woman (Susan Gibson), Venom (Simon), V, Judge Dread, Cat Woman (Birgit), Victoria Spiderman ( Stephen Hodges Whittaker), Victoria Spider Woman (Susanna), Robin QC (Hal Legere), Burnaby Batman (Me), and our newest F4J Canada superhero (a diamond in the rough) Captain Condom (Chuck Copeland).

As well we had 6 everyday superheroes join us in plain clothes which included the driver of our float. This combined with the many props, banners and flags made for a colourful entry indeed. I have included some photos as attachments.

This years parade began at 12:00 noon and wound its way for 20 blocks through the busiest streets in downtown Vancouver in 30 degree weather entertaining the 600,000 spectators in attendance. Fathers 4 Justice Canada was once more very well received and a fun time was had by all. It was a day of many smiles, cheers, laughter and memories to last a life time.

We would like to once more thank each and everyone who helped in making this years event another one of success.

I am still waiting on more pictures and editing video footage and as such it will be a couple more days before this event is up on the action web site. Until that time you will just have to enjoy the picture I have included with a promise of more to come.

Four Sacramento County Sheriff's cars pulled up in front of David Woods's house. He tried to explain to them what happened. But the lead deputy cut him off: "Yeah, that's fine. Put your hands behind your back."

David said, "No, wait, she stabbed me ... there's the knife. See the knife? See my neck wound? See?"

"Put your hands behind your back. Turn around," the deputy replied.

"No," David protested. "She stabbed..."

The deputies drew their weapons. David's little daughters came running out of the back bedroom pleading, "Leave Daddy alone! Mamma tried to hurt him with a knife!"

One deputy, a woman, took the children in the bedroom and shut the door. David stood there, cuffed.

How the fight began

David's wife Ruth had taken the kids out for a walk in 39 degree weather -- for seven hours.

"By the time she got back their fingers were blue, their lips were blue, their ears were blue," David says. The children were soaked; she was soaked. We argued for an hour. "We had to put them in a warm bath to warm them up; they were hypothermic.

Then she started cutting up vegetables for dinner. She had a serrated vegetable knife with a blade about seven inches long. She turned around and she stabbed at me.

"I tried to block it, but I was surprised. I was off balance...the knife went right through my collar and gave me a little nick on my neck.

"She reared back to stab me again. I tried to block it again...I hit her in the mouth. She dropped the knife, ran to the telephone, called 911, and told them, 'My husband is hitting me! I think he's gonna kill me.'

"When she dropped the knife, I stood over it. I wouldn't let her hide the knife. I was going to say to the police, 'See? She tried to stab me.'"

The truth came from the kids

After 15 minutes, the female deputy returned from the bedroom after talking to David's children. She told the other deputies, "It's true. Both of the daughters saw it. She tried to stab him with the knife."

They took the cuffs off David. "Your wife obviously needs help," the lead deputy said. "She works for Kaiser, you've got health insurance that covers mental health, you need to call the emergency number and get her an appointment."

David says there's a double standard when it comes to charging men. "Now, isn't that strange? When she had a fat lip, it was a felony and I was going to jail. But when they finally realized that she tried to stab me in the neck, it stopped being a crime, and instead it was a mental health issue."

The history of their case

David Woods is a partially disabled former Marine who endured years of abuse at the hands of his wife Ruth and the law enforcement and domestic violence system which unwittingly enabled her.

Woods, a former construction worker, suffered disabling work-related injuries early in his marriage. He says:"The violence really began in our family about 10 days after Ruth realized that she had all the power [financially]. I knew I had to get my kids out. I called the largest domestic violence shelter agency in Sacramento County several times. They told me, 'Men are perpetrators of domestic violence; women are victims of domestic violence,' and hung up.

"I had no way out. I had no money. Whenever we bought a car, Ruth insisted that the car be in her name only, so that if I took it and went to the movies without her approval she would call the police, and report, 'I'm estranged from my husband, and he stole my car.' She did that several times."

Worst of all is what David's children endured. One daughter says, "No one would help. Teachers, parents of friends, anyone I tried to talk to about what was going on at home told me I didn't understand, that my mother couldn't possibly be the violent party. When the police came to our home, they would always be ready to arrest my father, sometimes putting handcuffs on him. It was up to me to scream as loud as possible that it was my mom and not my dad, so they wouldn't take him away and leave me alone with her."

Domestic violence committed by women against men is generally ignored or minimized, yet more than 200 studies have found that women initiate at least as much domestic violence (DV) against their male partners as males initiate against their female partners. Research shows that men comprise about a third of DV injuries and deaths. Women often compensate for their lack of physical strength by employing weapons and the element of surprise -- just as David Woods' wife did, and just as recently murdered former NFL star Steve McNair's girlfriend allegedly did.

But in 2008, David Woods was partially vindicated. He was the principal plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against the State of California. The Third District Court of Appeals ruled that it violates equal protection that California's funding of domestic violence programs that offer services only to women but not to men.

Recent research on domestic violence

The most recent large-scale study of DV was conducted by Center for Disease Control and Prevention researchers and published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study, which surveyed 11,000 men and women, found that according to both men's and women's accounts, 50 percent of the violence in their relationships was reciprocal (involving both parties). In those cases, the women were more likely to have been the first to strike. Moreover, when the violence was one-sided, both women and men said that women were the perpetrators about 70 percent of the time.

The Obama administration recently appointed Lynn Rosenthal as the first-ever White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Vice President Biden, who wrote the Violence Against Women Act, said that creating the post will help the White House focus on stopping domestic violence.

Many of the world's leading authorities on domestic violence recently gathered at the "From Ideology to Inclusion 2009" conference in Los Angeles and detailed new research contradicting this view and offering solutions that will benefit all. Researchers emphasized their findings that ignoring female-perpetrated DV puts children, men, and also women in harm's way. The conference was presented by the California Alliance for Families & Children and co-sponsored by the Family Violence Treatment & Education Association.

DV researcher Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., a social scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center, told the conference that the most dangerous DV scenario for women is that of reciprocal violence, particularly if that violence is initiated by women. The best way for many women to be safe is to not initiate violence against their male partners. "The question of initiation of violence is a crucial one ... much DV is [reciprocated], and initiations -- even that seem minor -- may lead to escalation," she explained.

Dr. Capaldi's research shows that whereas men are often thought of as the only abusers and also as serial abusers, a young woman's DV is just as predictive of her male partner's future DV as the man's own past DV.

While Rosenthal and numerous others have created many programs and services to help abused women, there are very few services available to abused men. Those who seek help often face hostility or indifference from domestic violence hotlines, service providers, and law enforcement.

Denise Hines, Ph.D., of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., has studied why many abused men hesitate to leave their female partners. Hines told the conference that while some of the men's reasons for not leaving were similar to those of abused women (love, not believing in divorce, hoping the partner will change, etc.), the men's overwhelming concern was for their children.

Men often don't want to leave their wives because this would leave their children unprotected in the hands of an abuser. If the men choose to take their children away from the home, when they're found, the children are likely to be taken away and given to the mother, and the men might be arrested for abducting their children. Moreover, they would possibly lose custody of their children in the divorce anyway, again leaving their children in harm's way.

In Hines's study of male victims of domestic violence, 64 percent of the men who called a DV hotline were told that they "only helped women," and over half were referred to programs for male perpetrators. Overall, only 8 percent of the men who called hotlines classified them as "very helpful," whereas 69 percent found them to be "not at all helpful." Worse, when an abused man called the police, the police were more likely to arrest him than to arrest his abusive female partner.

Children end up victimized

In any kind of spousal violence, children often end up being victimized. In the highly publicized Socorro Caro murder case, Socorro often abused her husband Xavier, a prominent Northridge, California rheumatologist, and once assaulted him so badly he had to have surgery to regain his sight in one eye. Trapped and not knowing what to do or where to go, Xavier endured the abuse, once telling his wife, according to reports, that "One day you are going to do something that cannot be undone." A short time later, Socorro shot and killed three of their four children. Their baby survived only because Socorro ran out of bullets. She was later convicted and sentenced to death for the murders.

According to John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterers' treatment provider, even when the children themselves are not abused, "There is an overwhelming, irrefutable body of research indicating that children are adversely affected by witnessing inter-parental violence, regardless of the perpetrator's gender."

David's daughter gives her example:

"I grew up paranoid and feeling like the safety in my house was something only I was responsible for. If Mom became violent, it meant I failed. I learned the only way to survive was to watch every argument they had and be ready to interject myself as a distraction before violence happened.... My next task was to try to break it up: the screaming, threatening, pleading, whatever. I had to make sure no details escaped me, because if the cops got called they'd just believe my mom without question. It was my job to make sure the truth got heard."

Glenn Sacks, M.A., is the Executive Director of Fathers & Families. His columns have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. Ned Holstein, M.D., is the organization's Chairman of the Board. Their Web site is www.FathersandFamilies.org.

In case its lost on any one Jennifer Collins is a classic example of a child so brainwashed by her mother she will, even in adulthood, try desperately to defend the indefensible. There are so many ideologically predisposed other sycophants, including a large cadre of feminist lawyers, some in Universities like Joan Meier, who jump on the bandwagon not understanding or even caring about the damage to their credibility. Lawmakers have been so immersed in the propaganda by this agitprop they ignore sensible analysis as it flies in the face of their internalization of "mothers". Whats that old saying "Its as American as Motherhood and Apple Pie." When is a mythological illusion turned into a delusion.

Jennifer Collins is sadly a victim but does not understand it. The canard of family privacy stinks as much as the flimsy excuses she posits with the timing of events. A liar has to have a good memory but even that can't deal with facts from court documents. She has her own blog here. That's not very private. What never ceases to amaze me is how the victim feminist ideology trumps the truth. Are the court records and dates wrong? Were they not overseas when they say they were? She also states Mr. Sacks and FRA are trying to cover up the truth? What technique would that be in a very public internet universe? Logic is never the strong bailiwick of feminists."The beat goes on" to quote a song. MJM

The Feminist Family Law Movement claims that abusive fathers often employ Parental Alienation as a way to wrest custody from protective mothers in family court. They push for reforms which will make it easier to deny fathers shared custody or visitation rights based on unsubstantiated abuse claims. They also push for laws to exclude evidence of Parental Alienation in family law proceedings.

The FFLM has promoted several cause celebre cases in recent years as a way to garner public sympathy and political support for their agenda. I've investigated many of these cases and have found the FFLM's claims about them to be very inaccurate. I detailed several of these, including the high-profile Genia Shockome and Sadia Loeliger cases, in a co-authored column here.

The most recent of the FFLM's cause celebres cases is the Holly Collins case. Collins fled to Holland with her two children in 1993, claiming that her husband had abused the children and that she needed to flee to protect them. Last year I appeared on a Fox national TV show with Geraldo Rivera and Jennifer Collins, Holly's 24-year-old daughter who supports her mother's version of events. Jennifer Collins claims she's a victim of her father's false claims of Parental Alienation.

At the time of the TV show, which can be seen here, I thought it might be another fake case, but I also thought it might well be true. As I've said and written numerous times, I've never doubted that such cases are possible, though they're not very common. For example, in my co-authored column Protect Children from Alienation (Providence Journal, 7/8/06), I wrote:

[T]here are fathers who have alienated their own children through their abuse or personality defects, and who attempt to shift the blame to their children’s mothers by falsely claiming PAS. Yet parental alienation is a common, well-documented phenomenon. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PAS were present in the vast majority of the cases studied.

...In January I wrote a detailed, 10,000 word analysis of the case which cited all of the case's key court records, documents, etc. This analysis can be found here.

Upon investigation it became very apparent that what we were told by Holly, Jennifer, and their allies about the Holly Collins case was very inaccurate.

In the post I then discussed the new Joyce Murphy case, wherein a sexually deviant father used false claims of Parental Alienation to wrest custody from a protective parent--exactly as her feminist defenders said.

After the post I have again (sigh) been vilified by radicals in the Feminist Family Law Movement. Below are some of the claims made against me, along with my response to them:

You whore our tax dollars by the way of grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the organization you are with, Fathers & Families, that collects millions to spew your propaganda and fund fathers in custody battles. There is a financial incentive for you and Ned Holstein to whine about “false allegations” and your need to fight them.

Actually, Fathers & Families does not and has not ever collected one dime of tax dollars--we are supported entirely by contributions from our members and supporters. As a national 501(c)3 not-for-profit charitable organization founded in 1998, all of our financial information is publicly available on the Internet. The fact that our opponents would publicly and repeatedly issue such a completely false statement with such certainty speaks volumes about their credibility.

In speaking of the TV show where Jennifer Collins and I appeared, our opponents write:

Yes, and it wasn’t one of your prouder moments, was it?...You actually admitted to Dr. Silberg and Geraldo Rivera that some fathers probably do use so-called “parental alienation” as an excuse. Then Jennifer spoke up, and the audience and moderators gasped when she told of her brother’s skull being broken by their custodial dad (who would violently beat their mother Holly).

"Actually admitted" is an interesting way of putting it--for years I have stated clearly and unequivocally that there are fathers who employ false allegations of Parental Alienation in custody battles, just as mothers (and sometimes fathers) employ false abuse allegations. My opponents in the TV debate denied that Parental Alienation exists, which is an intellectually indefensible position. It absolutely does exist and is a major problem--that doesn't mean that it isn't sometimes misused.

Regarding Jennifer telling the audience that her father broke her brother's skull, this claim has been debunked--the injury was sustained by Zachary when he fell forward on a ride in an amusement park. Holly Collins sued the amusement park for the injury and obtained a $50,000 financial award from the park on Zachary's behalf. Moreover, Holly did not make this accusation of abuse in her court filings during the custody dispute in 1991 & 1992, several years after the alleged incident. To learn more, click here and go to "Problem #3" with Holly Collins' version of events.

Our opponents write:

After the show, you put out an All Points Bulletin to your cult to have people investigate Jennifer and Holly Collins

Actually, what I wrote was this:

I don't know the details of the case and have no position as to whether Holly Collins is telling the truth or not...would anybody (or group of two or three people) like to investigate the Collins case for me? To be clear, I do NOT want people who will go in with the intent of proving Holly Collins to be a liar and Jennifer deluded--I want the truth, whichever way it falls. If you find that what Holly and Jennifer claim happened is true, I will make it clear that this is your finding. I will publish your results here on my blog with full credit to you if you wish.

That certainly seems more than fair to me. I ended up investigating the case myself and presenting my findings here.

Many times during the public debate of this issue, Holly Collins, Jennifer Collins, and their supporters have implied that I have somehow invaded the Collins' privacy by investigating their case. However, they were the ones who repeatedly went on national TV with the details of their case--it's beyond ludicrous to then claim "privacy" when someone subsequently decides to question their version of events.

Our opponents write:

What the hell makes you an investigative expert? What are your qualifications and methodology?

Thanks, but I'm (among other things) an investigative journalist whose columns have been published several hundred times in top 100 newspapers. I'm more than qualified to investigate the court records of a family law case.

Our opponents write:

You are effectively calling people liars publicly, I hope you are insured against defamation.

I've been writing about these issues and types of cases for almost a decade and have never been sued once, for defamation or anything else--remember, truth is a defense. If Holly or her supporters would like to sue me, you can serve us with papers at our public offices in Boston. You will then be countersued, of course.

Our opponents write that on the Joyce Murphy case I was "caught with my pants down," implying that I had written about the case before or had some stake in it. Not at all--I had never heard of the Joyce Murphy case until a week ago.

When I saw it, I recognized that this was a case where an abusive father used false claims of Parental Alienation to cover for his abuse, and I said so. In all my media work I follow a simple rule--when your opponents are correct, say so, and when they're incorrect, say so. In this case they were correct.

They just don’t stop! Do they? I just received this message a few minutes ago:

"How do you explain that the fractured skull happened at an amusement park in 1987, and that Holly Collins sued the amusement park for the injury and obtained a $50,000 financial award from the park?"

FIRST OF ALL – GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

1996 - The amusement park accident was in 1996. The medical records clearly state "NO BROKEN BONES!" My mother and father didn’t have to sue the amusement park because they offered a settlement to the accident victims. There was a court appointed trustee who had to approve the settlement because it was an injury to a minor child caused by negligence on public property. You can be sure that if a child’s skull was fractured because of a defected amusement park ride, the settlement would have been extremely higher. The money was put into a trust fund for my brother. The money was his not my parents!

1997 - My father beat up my brother and my mother in July 1997. That is when he broke the bone in my brother’s skull! Because of this abuse Child Protection became involved and told my mother that if she didn’t take us and leave our father she could be charged with “failure to protect.”

This is a clear example of how my father, Glenn Sacks and other father’s rights groups are distorting the facts and trying to conceal the truth!

There are a few obvious problems with what Jennifer wrote:

1) By all accounts, including Jennifer's and Holly's, Holly kidnapped Jennifer and her brother Zachary in March of 1994, and neither of them (nor Holly) has seen their father since. Jennifer's claim that "My father beat up my brother and my mother in July 1997" is not possible. It's not a typo, since the 1997 date jibes with the rest of the post--in fact, it's one of the main points of the post.

"[O]n or about May 10, 1986, the plaintiff Holly Collins and her minor child Zachary were at the Canobie Lake amusement park...Zachary Collins was injured while riding on a 'kiddie ride' identified as the 'junior turnpikes sports car' ride.

To see the legal settlement between the Park and Holly over Zachary's injury, see page 4 of the document here.

The FFLM wants to eliminate evidence of Parental Alienation from family law cases and terminate all presumptions of joint custody/shared parenting. They use these cases to drum up public and legislative support for this agenda. From the moment I wrote up my analysis of each of these three cases--Loeliger (here), Shockome (here), and Collins (here)--not one of these previously prominent cases has received even a small bit of mainstream media attention.

About Me

I am Politically active and right of centre on most issues with the odd exception such as legalization of "Mary Jane".
I advocate on changes to Family Law - an incredibly dysfunctional arena where parents are pitted against one another and children are the victims.
My picture will sometimes show me as a younger man simply because I like them.

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Leading causes of Injury to Women 2006

In 2006, unintentional falls were the leading cause of nonfatal injury among women of every age group, and rates generally increased with age. Women aged 65 years and older had the highest rate of injury due to unintentional falls (59.7 per 1,000 women), while slightly more than 19 per 1,000 women aged 18–34 and 35–44 years experienced fall-related injuries. Unintentional injuries sustained as motor vehicle occupants were the second leading cause of injury among 18- to 34-year-olds (18.7 per 1,000), while unintentional overexertion was the second leading cause of injury among women aged 35–44 and 45–64 years (13.7 and 9.3 per 1,000, respectively). Among women aged 65 years and older, being unintentionally struck by or against an object was the second leading cause of injury (5.7 per 1,000).

Injury related Emergency Department Visits

Unintentional and intentional injuries each represented a higher proportion of emergency department (ED) visits for men than women in 2005. Among women and men aged 18 years and older, unintentional injuries accounted for 19.9 and 27.5 percent of ED visits, respectively, while intentional injuries, or assault, represented 1.4 and 2.7 percent of visits, respectively. Among both women and men, unintentional injury accounted for a higher percentage of ED visits among those living in non-metropolitan areas, while adults living in metropolitan areas had a slightly higher percentage of ED visits due to intentional injury.